indentured laborers

The Indentured Laborers of Trinidad & Tabago

Who Are They? The Indentured laborers of Trinidad and Tabago were Indian people that were lied to and were forced to leave their home on false promises of land and new beginnings. After the African slaves were emancipated from British owned plantations in the Caribean plantation owners wanted, “needed”, very cheap labor, so they thought of Indian agriculturist immediately as a test to see if this new labor system would work.The first boat that arrived on May 30, 1845, carrying 225 adult passengers on board who had travelled more than 36,000 km over 103 days. This practice lasted till 1917. After the long horrific journey they were sent to their alotted estates. These plantations were meant to meet proper treatment standards, but the work followed the same pattern of slavery. The agricultural and laboring classes of the Uttar Pradesh and Bihar regions of north India, with a com- paratively smaller number being recruited from Bengal and various areas in south India. Approximately 85% of the immigrants were Hindus, and 14% Muslims. The laborers mostly worked in the sugar fields until they were industrialized in 1870. Plantation owners sold their sugar land to factories and took the laborers to work in the cocoa fields. Recruitment of Indians for the indenture scheme overseas was suspended on March 12th, 1917 because of the military effort of the First World War (1914-1918) where ships were utilized for the war, but in Trinidad the laborers were still on the plantations. The British Imperial Government and the colonial Government of India gave in to the public pressure to end the system. Indian indentureship finally came to an end on January 1st, 1920, and all existing contracts were ended prematurely. All contracts for indentured Indians in all colonies, came to an end on this date and everyone was free to make their lives on their own. S.S. Ganges, boat that transported Indentured Laborers

Trinidadian “PostCards” Colonial postcards included women in traditional Indian styles representing the islands as exotic tourist destinations. These postcards were commissioned by “British colonial administrators, local white elites, American and British hoteliers, and companies such as the United Fruit Company when the tourism industry began in the Anglophone Caribbean” historian Krista Thompson wrote. They added to campaigns centered on “tropicalization,” meant to produce island images for tourist consumption. The laborer posed softly, dressed in lehenga cholis and gold and silver jewelry. They were often pictured in photography studios, leaning against European -esque pillars; sometimes they posed in front of cane fields. The backgrounds of landscape and crops are used in favor of portraiture. The representations of Indo-Caribbean women in colonial postcards functioned to perpetuate specific ideologies of labor and capital during the period of indentureship. In many of the typical photographs taken during the 1910s, are absence of images of their servitude like wooden barracks, cane stalks and cacao trees deliberately to erase the labor performed by Indo-Caribbean women. The emphasis on the exaggerated jewelry and proper clothing, serves to erase labor exploitation, poverty, and hazardous working conditions on plantations that replicated those of slavery. These women were active in estate strikes and rebel lious demonstrations in the same time these photographs were taken, they are now seen as posed as exotic, adorned, domesticated, and disciplined subjects who seem to accept the control and power of the plantation structure as passively. But maybe if we give them these women the narrative the story changes.

Culture; Indo-Caribean Jewlery The jewelry of indenture also symbolized a uniquely female Indo-Caribbean identity. Many women that chose to become laborers were Hindu widows, when a women became widowed in India their heads were shown, their bangles broken, and their possessions seized. They were then subjected to abuse, starvation, and social ostracism. This jewlery that they adorned themselves with recreated the terms of their existence in a Caribbean setting, casting aside the restrictions they were forced to endure in India. It’s ironic that widows were able to take on a path of independence in the Caribbean while engaging in the imperialist project of in denture. As Indo-Caribbean Hindu widows asserted and reinvented their identities, they contributed to an emerging feminist Indo-Caribbean culture, and the visual emblem of this culture became the jewelry worn by female laborers. Indentured workers were paid in silver shillings, the women had these shillings melted and fashioned into various pieces including churis or churiyaan that would be worn from wrist to elbow, bazubands (arm bands), karas (ankle bands), rings including finger and toe rings, and nakphuls (nose rings), as well necklaces like chandrahas and kanthis. churis a nd bazubands Most women laborers purchased their own jewelry and were able to dictate the designs of the pieces, this resulted in the jewlery being heavily influenced by the conditions of indentureship shown chandrahas necklace in their designs. As part of their everyday dress, this jewelry signified their independence as wage laborers, the ability to pay off debts, and an anticipated kanthis necklace freedom from estate work. Indentured women wore their jewelry to show its sharp and immediate connection to the material conditions of indentureship. On the cocoa plantations of North Trinidad, women laborers had the ends of beras fashioned into cacao pods. As symbols of labor and resistance cacao pods and other symbols became incorporated into designs, the class registers of the jewelry became more pronounced.

Indo-Caribbean women wore their jewelry as a subversive strategy in terms of a materialist visuality. They made jewelry an expression that made visible their role in the social and economic systems of indenture ship. Indo-Caribbean jewelry, began to functions as an alternative Caribbean text that allows East Indian voices to be heard as their was very little written or heard from their perspective. This alternative text changes the “inteded” representation of Indo-Caribbean women outside of the social relations that structure their lives. An alternative text that counters the marginalization of Indo-Caribbean elements in representations of Caribbean culture. Indo-Caribbean jewelry, stands as a counter to the silence that has always surrounded our contributions to Caribbean culture, a silence noticeable today in political discourses, academic journals and books, any form of media, and in many other texts that claim to represent Caribbean society. Women, embraced the materialist visual practice of wearing their jewelry to show its direct relation to the structures of indentureship. This is how Indo-Caribbean women began to engage in struggles for progressive change. The traditional Indian customs of gifting symbolic pieces of jewelry to newborns, young girls, and brides was practiced during indentureship. And after indentureship ended the roles of jewlery began to change a little. New in-laws give a bride two to four gold bracelets to replace her wrist to elbow silver churiyaan. This gift is meant to emphasize the brides new middle-class status acquired through marriage. Now a woman would wear gold jewelry and a orhni (head scarf), to make the statement that she was now extreamly far away from the estate, and forced labour. Though the number of pieces were lessened/substituted for gold ones, the styles from indenureship remained fashionable, and are today made as a specifically Caribbean style. Over the year’s jewelers have added to beras certain visuals soley associated with Indo-Caribbean jewelry which consciously invokes the past of labor and economic relations that shaped Caribbean societies. The first piece of jewlry a young woman buys herself are usually beras even if she was gifted some previously. For me I wear my Mom’s but maybe one day I’ll go buy my own. .

My Family’s History These are my great grandparents. Nana’s mother. Her The first photo is of Mama’s parents. husband died en route Nana (g-grandfather) was born on the from India, on the boat from India to Trinidad. same boat she gave Nani’s (g-grandmother) parents had birth on. In Trinidad her in trinidad. she then got remarried and had 3-4 other kids. This is Papa’s (my grandfathers) Mother . Her parents were also labor- ers that had her in Trinidad Papa Mama These are my grandparents. Papa was born in 1915 and worked in the oil field. Mama was born in 1923 and had many ventures such as selling vegtables and ghee (butter) she made, she also ran a lot of household finances. Mama wasn’t able to get an education because at 6/7 years old she had to drop out to take care of her siblings.

My Family’s History Mama and Papa had fourteen children. Seven girls and seven boys. My mom is the second youngest. Personally it’s so crazy for me to watch the family grow and shrink at the same time. My whole life I grew up surrounded by everyone because almost all of them immigrated to the same town. But it feels like people are moving away, getting older, and passing away and just watching this thing I’m so accustomed to change like that is so insane to me. There are only four brothers left now. But there are so many little kids and babies now because the next generation after the fourteen kids are now adding to the family. The way my cousins in that generation are so quickly moving away also scares me because its a byproduct of their parents immigrating. Families that grow up in villages are so there for eachother, there is no extended family because everyone is just together as one, but western families are just so... seperate. 2012, summer 1990, Mama’s funeral 2005, pooja 2021, Thanksgiving I was behind the camera in this one

Recipies! Food is a huge part of our culture and an amazing bonding expierience for my family. Ever Diwali my whole family gets together to cook so much food and its something i look forward to every year. Kurma This is a huge hit I’ve never met any- one who does not like kurma its the best thing in the world. 2 1/2cups flour cardmium cloves cinnamon 1 1/2 sticks butter 3 big spoons crisco 1 can coconut milk 1 can water 3 spoons ghee add water as needed instructions kneed everything w coconut water to dough seperate intoabout 6 large balls flatten lightly let sit for 10 min barah (roll) into cirlcle slice into small thin rectangles (french fry shaped) fry with canola oil toss w/ paag let cool

Work Cited https://www.cnn.com/style/article/indo-caribbean-women-colonial-postcards/index. html https://caribbeanvistas.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/mahabiralternativejewelry1.pdf https://nationaltrust.tt/the-last-ship-end-of-indentureship/ https://scroll.in/magazine/864273/searching-through-the-fog-of-history-this-man- helps-trinidad-families-trace-their-indian-roots#:~:text=Indians%20came%20to%20 Trinidad%20and,abolition%20of%20slavery%20in%201833.&text=Almost%20 1.50%20lakh%20Indians%20took,Many%20of%20them%20never%20returned.